Fighting the Darkness

This seems to me such a dark time in America, with a darkness that is only growing. At every turn, the forces of conservatism, inequality and oligarchy are racking up victories, with little or no or only the most pale and weak-kneed opposition from the more "liberal" or socially progressive voices in our political structure. Though some see rays of hope in such accomplishments as the increasing acceptance of the right of homosexuals to enter into marriage, I see this as only a very small drop in the bucket when we consider the larger problems of stagnant wages for the many and ever-expanding fortunes for the few, the increasing dominance of the wealthy elite and large corporations in many areas of our life. Even the supposedly ultra-liberal cable news network MSNBC runs the self-congratulatory and pro-fracking advertisements of the carbon fuel industry, and the supposedly liberal New York Times increasingly caters to the Wall Street-financial services crowd that now dominates New York City as well as the American economy.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the largest international body of climate scientists in the world, released a new report on March 31st detailing how the climate is already changing with catastrophic effect, and how the dangers and crises now occurring will only be magnified if the world is unwilling to take action. As an educator, I see the trend toward increasingly standardized and regulated education only gaining strength, as influential figures from the President on down seem to be abandoning the ideals of liberal arts education in favor of increasingly vocational, job skills oriented education. When people are no longer allowed to think freely and openly, to freely explore the riches of cultural heritage and to freely experiment with ideas and activities that are freed from the stifling grip of monetary evaluation, but when the education system only trains the bulk of people to perform the tasks and functions deemed valuable by the high priests of the high-tech companies and the corporate economy, an economy organized around the maximization of corporate profits and stock market dividends, not the fulfillment of human needs, I shudder to think of the cold, heartless, fearful, high-tech prison of a society that we are building for ourselves, digital brick by dividend brick. Profits will increase but human freedom and happiness? I doubt it.

I am starting to reach the conclusion that others before me have, a conclusion that I have always resisted; the feeling that there may be no hope for saving America from its drift and decline. I actually sympathize to some extent with the right-wingers and Tea Partiers who range and rant about our country going wrong; I agree that our society is sick, but I disagree with them about the nature of the malady and the treatment to be administered. Many on the right seem to think that the root of the problem is Big Bad Government; I disagree completely. I would grant that our government can do stupid things, that some policies, regulations and programs may be misguided and counterproductive, but that calls for fixing and improving the policies, regulations and programs, not abolishing them all in favor of an unregulated libertarian utopia. I think that vision, if ever achieved, would only result in a dog-eat-dog, every-gun-for-himself, zero compassion dystopia. I see the problem lying in the power of large corporate business interests to manipulate everything to their advantage, without caring enough about the suffering of the poor or the desecration of the planet. If corporations were able to function as good public citizens and be effective stewards of society and the environment, I would be all in favor of total free market capitalism, but I do not see that being the case at all.

Without pressure from the government with its pesky rules, regulations, policies and taxation, many companies and wealthy individuals would do nothing for the benefit of others or of the world in general, but only seek to further enrich themselves and increase their plunder and power. That's what happened in such periods of economic "freedom" as the "robber baron" era of the late 1800s, in the Roaring Twenties, and in our recent period of financial deregulation and financial collapse. You may have noticed that since the bleakest days of the 2008 downturn, the stock market has recovered, big banks and financial companies are running up great profits, but many people are now working for lower wages than before the crash, many others cannot find work at all, and many people have lost their homes and had their lives ruined. In this case, the government functioned effectively to rescue the financial elite, but not the rest of us. What I conclude from that is not that we need to abolish the government, but need to radically reform it to make it more responsive to human needs. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's ruling in the McCutcheon case this week will only make our politicians more dependent on big-money, fat-cat donors, so the situation is not likely to improve anytime soon.

I do see a ray of hope in my little corner of the Pagan world. Recent communications with a number of Norse Pagans in America have again demonstrated that I am not alone in wishing to develop a new form of American Asatru that would be politically progressive, environmentally concerned, anti-racist, anti-military, and pro-social justice. I think there are enough of us to do it. So, please do get in touch with me if you are on this wavelength. Send me a message to this blog including your email address, and note that you do NOT want this published on the blog. I will contact you off-blog and we can start networking, sharing ideas and planning. This may be a dark time, but we can do our best to be a source of light and vision, love for the earth and caring for humanity--ALL humanity and ALL the earth. A universal Paganism based in Norse traditions but not limited to them. If this resonates with you, please communicate with me.

Techno-Utopia or Techno-Serfdom?

When Steve Jobs died a few months ago, I found myself unable to join in the seemingly universal--at least in the American mass media--lionization, if not outright canonization--of this business leader who had become a cultural icon for many. Yes, his company, Apple made nice computers, with often cutting-edge technology that would later be imitated by other computer and technology companies, and then went on to introduce the iPod, iPad and iPhone to similar effect. I could understand giving him credit as an effective business leader with a fine instinct for sniffing out new trends and possibilities and then shaping them into technological and business successes for his company, but does this really make him a hero, a saint, a world-changer on the order of Martin Luther King or Gandhi or Copernicus or the Buddha? Sorry, I don't think so. He was also a bully who often treated his employees horribly, a childish tyrant prone to tantrums, a heartless corporate executive who was entirely happy to ship American jobs overseas to China to take advantage of the low-paid, quasi-slave labor available there, and a ruthless competitor whose company's success was paved with the broken bodies of other companies and technologies.

In my view, Jobs' greatest legacy is the creation of a new style of techno-capitalism which combines the most destructive features of both high technology and advanced corporate capitalism. Apple actively seeks to either decimate or dominate one after another area of business, communication and culture, leaving in its wake a scorched and damaged cultural, economic and social terrain in which all human activity is downsized and digitalized into Apple devices and software applications. Once there were music stores, record and CD shops, where a whole eco-system of music-loving people could work and make a living, share knowledge of music, and create little communities of music devotees. This has largely been replaced by the online iTune service, a cold, inhuman sphere lacking in any human warmth or possibility of actual (as opposed to "virtual") community. Once there was a publishing industry in which a whole eco-system of literature-dedicated people could work and make a living, from authors to editors to literary agents and booksellers, a model that had served the reading public quite well for many decades, even centuries. Now this is being replaced by the digital book reader, causing a collapse of the traditional publishing industry. Once there were camera companies and photo shops.....The list goes on.

The growth of Apple-style tech businesses is far from a cornucopia of universal benefit to all. It means high profits for some, outsourced jobs and unemployment for many others. Remember that, the next time you hear a politician babbling on about "innovation" and "business opportunity." Ask the politician who will get the benefit of whatever innovation or business s/he is promoting. Will it be for American workers, or just corporate investors? Shareholders or the general population? We need businesses that benefit more than just the corporate and financial elite.

We are told that this is not a problem. We are told that this is simply the inevitable progress of technological innovation and the expanding utopia of consumer delight. I say, BULLSHIT. This is ruthless capitalism at its most savage, destroying the livelihood of many for the profit of the few, and creating a world where we are all gradually being forced to purchase devices that are quickly becoming the only way to access large areas of cultural and social life, because the alternative ways of experiencing our culture and society are being eliminated. For whose benefit is all this taking place? Tech company stock value keeps going up, that's for sure, but is that really all we should be thinking about? A narrow market-focused view is to accept this as economically and technologically inevitable....older forms of music and book publishing disappear, long live Apple and Amazon and consumer choice. After all, these shifts are only happening because the consumer WANTS them to happen....otherwise, they wouldn't be rushing to the Apple store every few months to buy the new, improved, faster iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc?

I think that "consumer choice" in this context is something of an illusion, a false myth. These products are being shoved down our throat with an incredible barrage of marketing pressure, playing on people's vanity and insecurity as surely as women's fashion magazines market anorexic visions of feminine beauty. Who wants to be left behind, a techno-idiot, caught holding an out-of-date phone that is unable to advise you on how to perform an emergency appendectomy, or using a laptop that weighs more than three feathers? Horror of horrors. Fast food a la McDonald's is also highly popular, but by now everyone knows it is unhealthy. When I see people walking around totally obsessed with tapping away on their darling little phones, playing idiotic games and becoming totally unaware of and indifferent to the world around them, I have no doubt that they are enjoying themselves, but I fear that their enjoyment is not without risk or damage. Heroin and crystal meth are also popular "apps" that produce pleasurable effects in the brain, and can be highly profitable for those who produce and distribute them, but this does not mean that they are not personally and socially destructive. If you did a market research survey on heroin or meth addicts, however, you could prove that these products are highly valued by their customers and consumers. So what?

Furthermore, as the economic might and market heft of companies like Apple and Amazon grow, they are able to increasingly force competitors out of business or gobble them up and add the vanquished technology to their own imperial arsenals. Apple, Google and others are gaining monopoly power not only in the technology sphere, but increasingly, over our cultural and social life. They are also becoming tools of government surveillance, with Google for example being all too willing to assist our friendly Department of Homeland Security in monitoring every conversation you babble into your phone or every idea you enter into your keyboard. There is a lot more going on here than just a casual growth of technology that creates and distributes cool new "apps" and along the way causes out-of-date companies to dwindle and vanish.

Since companies like Apple and Google and Facebook are, when all is said and done, capitalistic, profit-seeking companies, their basic goal will always be profit, not the benefit of society or culture. That means that over time, they are likely to seek to "rationalize" their businesses by reducing production of unprofitable items and focusing on what can be made most cheaply and economically. There is likely to be less and less support for non-mainstream works of art, thought and culture. Niche channels will remain, of course, and some will thrive, thank the gods, but we can expect Google, Apple and Facebook to bombard us with junk that they think we will want to buy, especially if they can convince us that we also need a new app or device to fully enjoy the latest, increasingly hyperactive but essentially soulless junk.

So no, I will NOT worship at the shrine of St. Stephen of the App. I fear a future of techno-serfdom where a small class of capitalist investors and engineers will make fabulous profits, while the majority will see their opportunities for a decent livelihood dwindle, as more and more functions are taken over by machinery. As an educator, I have no doubt that the tech companies are eager to replace teachers and professors with gadgets and apps, completely ignoring the social dimension of the classroom experience, that brings people together, teaches human socialization, and creates a common culture of learning. I worry that in the Brave New World that the techno-corporate engineers and marketers are preparing for us, our culture will be junk and our society will be increasingly disconnected as people become semi-autistic in their devotion to whirring, chirping, flashing little boxes. I see little cause for optimism, but I do hope to resist in my own small way.

I see Paganism, a reaching back to nature to find sacredness and value in the sun in the sky, the leaves and blossoms gesturing in the trees and the timeless murmuring of rivers, something above and beyond technological gadgetry, as a part of that resistance, and certainly a good place to rest after each long day of techo-serfdom.